The Division of Enrollment and Retention Management will be sponsoring two upcoming webinars from 9-11 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 1, and Monday, Nov. 7, in room 253C of the Busch Student Center. These webinars will be open to the University community as well as external partners.

About the webinarsAccording to the United States Department of Veterans Affair, there were approximately 23.4 million veterans living in the United States in 2008. During the 2007-2008 academic year, approximately 660,000 veterans and approximately 215,000 military service members were enrolled in undergraduate education, representing four percent of all undergraduates.

In 2009, Robert Morris University became one of the first universities to enroll in the Yellow Ribbon Program, guaranteeing its veteran-students a free education under the post-9/11 GI Bill.

The Yellow Ribbon Program allows institutions of higher education in the U.S. to voluntarily enter into an agreement with the Veterans Administration to fund tuition expenses that exceed the highest public, in-state, undergraduate tuition rate. As a direct result, the student-veteran population at RMU swelled from 36 to 182 in less than two years.

And it wasn't just the Yellow Ribbon Program that accounted for the dramatic rise in students. RMU aggressively pursued a new model for serving the military student-veteran on campus (a model that will be shared in the Nov. 1 webinar): academic excellence, focused services and targeted grants and foundations.

A team of five presenters will highlight the challenges and solutions in overcoming obstacles to providing an environment conducive to the military veteran. The webinar will provide an overview of the three components of the model: academic excellence, focused services and targeted grants and foundations. There will also be an in-depth examination of the challenges and obstacles to providing a veteran-friendly campus.

This webinar will focus on RMU's efforts to more effectively reach veteran-students through the use of mobile technology and video conferencing. It will also detail the development of the RMU Vets mobile app -- the nation's first and only mobile app developed specifically for higher education veteran students.